Artcow Ken Penders - Former Archie Sonic Comic Writer/Artist

[AnOminous]

To be honest, I think most people who now have hatred for Ken are like those who just recently found out about the guy (maybe via vids or something), it's kinda how you suddenly have people who recently started talking about Dobson.

I don't really hate the guy. He's one of the rare mostly harmless cows. I wish we still had more, I'm really sick of the evil fuck cows who aren't really that funny but just anger-inducing.

 

[Captain Syrup]

To be honest, I think most people who now have hatred for Ken are like those who just recently found out about the guy (maybe via vids or something), it's kinda how you suddenly have people who recently started talking about Dobson. Everyone who had experience with Ken in the past and raged about his ass on the golden forum days has long moved on. Most they will do is share stories of his bad writing and have a good laugh at how up his own arse the dude was.

Time turns tragedy into comedy. The Archie line is long dead (and it's not like Sonic himself had much left to lose when Forces dropped.)

The only question is whether Ken is in on the joke. His bovine stare suggests otherwise, he’s just bad at this and incapable of stopping himself from promoting his awful books.

 

[Polychromos]

I feel you on this part. I tend to defend him quite a bit even though I don't really care about him, mainly because people always want to see him get some comeuppance but he's never really done anything wrong. He's just an idiot with delusions of self grandeur who spends far too much of his time absorbing DNC talking points and arguing with gay furries on the internet.

People have argued with me before about his right to sell this shit and I gave specific examples of other IP related situations that show there's at least precedent for this kind of thing and it obviously still pisses people off. I just don't get it. His gay comics aren't hurting anyone, and neither are his reprints.

Even his old comics, people seem to hate so viscerally but can't ever put them in the context of what they were, loose tie in books for a kid's property that had next to no oversight. It doesn't magically make them good. They aren't, and unless you're a child there's probably nothing in them for you but there's also nothing in there worth getting upset over, they're worth a laugh.

Thank you for this reply! Funnily enough, Kiwifarms seems to be the only place, where you don't get weird amounts of backlash for not feeling personally offended by this guy.
I kind of do care about him. He's a total idiot but as a child, his work did have meaning for me.
As an adult I am able to acknowledge, that it's probably worse than mediocre, but I don't think it's the worst thing ever.
He transcendens the political spectrum, in a way that modern lolcows rarely do. There are people from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, that recite the same old arguments, weather they fit their believes or not. He has no importance whatsoever and yet, his a-logs get so incredibly angry about everything he does. Just laugh at the idiot!
My favorite are the "support the artist" types, who post all kind of conspiracy theories about how he maliciously fucked over Archie Comics in the lawsuit (like him stealing Archies copy of his contract lol). I'm neither American, nor a lawyer, but I'm still pretty sure, that Archie just fucked up really badly. I don't care wether or not he lied, as far as I remember they weren't able to produce his original contract. If you feel the need to be angry about this, be angry at their incompetence.
From my point of view, this was a positive. Him trying to sell the rights to his characters was way more fun, than I had with the last two Sonic games.
Let's be honest, if they would actually want to bring back characters like Sally Acorn, which he doesn't own, they totally could, but they just don't want to and Penders is a useful scapegoat.

I don't really hate the guy. He's one of the rare mostly harmless cows. I wish we still had more, I'm really sick of the evil fuck cows who aren't really that funny but just anger-inducing.

Yes! That's kind of why I can't argue, that I like the Lara-Su Chronicles ironically. There is a weird kind of purity to his autism, that most lolcows don't have anymore.
That's why I don't like the moral fagging about some of his weirder Twitter posts. (I'm not trying to passive aggressively critique people in this thread. This is much worse on other sites ). I'm glad that they can exist here, but there are only so many threads on genuinely evil people I can stomach.
I should probably post more of it here, but his Twitter feed truly entertains me to no end on a daily basis!

 

[CEO of Gay]

I should probably post more of it here, but his Twitter feed truly entertains me to no end on a daily basis!

Agreed. Less channeling of his A-logs, and more laughing at the silly shit that Ken says.

 

[AnOminous]

I'm neither American, nor a lawyer, but I'm still pretty sure, that Archie just fucked up really badly. I don't care wether or not he lied, as far as I remember they weren't able to produce his original contract. If you feel the need to be angry about this, be angry at their incompetence.

It's pretty simple as legal issues go.

Copyrights can only be transferred pursuant to a written agreement, either for specific works or a whole body of "works made for hire." I believe the latter was the standard Archie contract.

The party asserting the existence of a contract is the party with the burden to produce it. They didn't produce it. So Ken had to do literally nothing and had no obligation even to rebut the claim of a contract. Only if they actually had produced such a document would he have to do anything to win, such as proving it was a forgery, or had been obtained by fraud, with a gun to his head, whatever.

IP documents like this are basically your money, so losing them is like "whoopsy daisy just lost $10,000 in raw cash on the subway" stupidity.

 

[Dumbchan]

You need to see how he captures humans!

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That’s from Nights into Dreams, but I think they switched artists like every two issues before it got axed, and they were all terrible. The only thing that stuck with me were the endless shots of Claris’ ass, which looks like two perfectly polished bowling balls.

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I have the full series of this. This wasn't the best work of Pat Spaz as he did majority of the artwork you see here. I'd have to dig out who else worked on it, but I recognize Patrick Spaz work anywhere.

Wasn't aware Ken also worked on these. I may have to dig them back out, but the art in all of the NiGHTs comics had the most questionable anatomy.

 

[Sabrina]

Sega won't bring the SatAM characters and story back because they really don't want to be associated with the teenagers fucking each other shit. Sega tried cancelling the show and the comics just picked it up and did more gross fanfiction with weirder and weirder characters.

They're kids games. Although I'm not really sure of the status of Rouge the Bat but that's creepy af

 

[Kiwisee]

If you think his Night Into Dream drawing is bad, you should see some of his pokemon and digimon drawing from the 90s.

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There’s some uncanny yet vintage charm to his works that I can’t quite put my finger on. It reminds me of the type of art you’d see on VHS ports of anime that would have American made art instead of using Japanese art.

 

[Polychromos]

Absolutely amazing new artwork! I think he honestly looks better in this style, than most of the other characters. But the standard is still rock bottom, I guess.

 

[The Paranoid Organ]

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The concept behind this is a character study of a beloved character in adult form as they would appear in THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES.

For a split second I thought that he was implying that he would insert Tails into TLSC. THAT would of been a fun litigation arc.

 

[Polychromos]

For a split second I thought that he was implying that he would insert Tails into TLSC. THAT would of been a fun litigation arc.

Knuckles is literally in there. He just renamed him in the stupidest way possible as K'Nox.
I honestly think Penders would have to do something insanely stupid to be sued by Sega. His work is less popular than most fan projects and I think Sega is aware that even the lefties in the fan base are in favour of the big company, over the small independent artist. This is a very rare and very favourable power dynamic. It's also a really good excuse to not bring back characters that don't fit with the Japanese canon.
And even though Sega didn't loose the second lawsuit in that sense, they don't have the best track record. (And while Ken mentioned wanting to sue them for completely insane reasons, and I do think that the story for the DS game was so generic, that someone could have come up with it, without knowing the Penders comics, he also might have had a point there.)

 

[Big Nasty]

Tails as an adult man with a "1990s tough guy" beard. LMAO.

 

[McSneaks]

You need to see how he captures humans!

View attachment 7077837

That’s from Nights into Dreams, but I think they switched artists like every two issues before it got axed, and they were all terrible. The only thing that stuck with me were the endless shots of Claris’ ass, which looks like two perfectly polished bowling balls.

View attachment 7077844

No the same guy did the penciling for all 6 issues (Patrick Spaziante). They had a couple people doing coloring including Ken but the actual drawings were the same dude

It was definitely shit everything about it lol they all have feet bigger than their heads. I had the first 3 as a kid cause I liked the game enemy designs

 

[Rukario]

Absolutely amazing new artwork! I think he honestly looks better in this style, than most of the other characters. But the standard is still rock bottom, I guess.
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I thought the top-right character looked like a Bored Ape for a moment. Hard to think which is an uglier art style.

 

[Sabrina]

Ken has drawn Tells this way before so looks like he's going in LSC.

The first chair picture on the right is really giving me a hard time trying to figure out what is actually going on there

 

[Rukario]

Absolutely amazing new artwork! I think he honestly looks better in this style, than most of the other characters. But the standard is still rock bottom, I guess.
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Another thing i've noticed is he seems to have drawn on DC Comics watermarked paper, complete with Comic Sans font! (for context, Comic Sans MS was supposedly inspired by the font used in The Dark Knight Returns).

Think he's working secretly for DC, or (more likely) is his inkjet printer constantly needing blue ink cartridges printing the watermarked outlines?

 

[Trombonista]

That could just be old paper.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

I'm glad we have a new "literally everything wrong with Ken Penders at once" and it DOESN'T involve the Knuckleseses

 

[Belvedere]

Another thing i've noticed is he seems to have drawn on DC Comics watermarked paper, complete with Comic Sans font! (for context, Comic Sans MS was supposedly inspired by the font used in The Dark Knight Returns).

Think he's working secretly for DC, or (more likely) is his inkjet printer constantly needing blue ink cartridges printing the watermarked outlines?

Nah, Ken isn't just an IP thief, he is a regular thief as well. I remember him showing sketches done in paper stock with Archie's watermark even years after he had stopped working for them. This paper has the watermark of the company because they were custom orders bought in bulk from the manufacturer.

He must have taken entire stacks of board paper that was supposed to be used in-office with the excuse of working at home. Ken probably did the same when he worked with DC in the past. The fact that even years later he still shows recent sketches done in that paper stock shows the amount of office supplies he "requisitioned" throughout the years.

 

[Rukario]

Nah, Ken isn't just an IP thief, he is a regular thief as well. I remember him showing sketches done in paper stock with Archie's watermark even years after he had stopped working for them. This paper has the watermark of the company because they were custom orders bought in bulk from the manufacturer.

He must have taken entire stacks of board paper that was supposed to be used in-office with the excuse of working at home. Ken probably did the same when he worked with DC in the past. The fact that even years later he still shows recent sketches done in that paper stock shows the amount of office supplies he "requisitioned" throughout the years.

He's probably the sort that came to work in a white van so he could fill it of office supplies and furniture before he went home. Its possible the reason many comic book firms almost went bust in the past 30 years is due to him raiding their stationary cupboards.