- Joined
- Jun 3, 2021
this is where I think he probably is crossing the line, beyond the plagiarized cover art, he presumably doesn't own these stories like he does with his Knuckles stuff, because he didn't write them. He owns characters, and the stories he wrote. so barring the little he wrote that had Shadow in it, I'm not sure that he can put this in particular out. People have been arguing with me for years about his rights to re-release any archie stuff, which he totally can because he owns everything he wrote, but this appears to be at a cursory glance, stuff he did not. I also am not quite sure how exactly he ended up reprinting the original scott shaw run, but I imagine he shouldn't be able to do that either, but nobody noticed so he's moved on to something like this that could actually make him some money on specific character recognition.
editing this to say that I looked on his website and it apparently *IS* only the little bit of Shadow featuring stories he wrote, padded out with some scripts and shit that didn't get released. so yeah, he can totally release this, EXCEPT it also includes pages from some random issue that's the rest of the story for a SA2 Adaptation, from like 10 years later, written by someone else. so he's testing the line here by making something almost entirely within his rights, but not quite lol. he's been saying the last few years he was going to rerelease all of archie sonic eventually, and pay the creators for everything he didn't do, but I've always been unclear on how he could do that. he could if his lawsuit set some precedent for all the rights for archie sonic, then it would just be a matter of if those creators agreed to let him publish their work, because they'd own it, but I don't think it did. I'd assume during the lawsuit they just couldn't find his contracts, not that absolutely all of them were gone, but who knows. if that was the case, then maybe. but I think the issue he's using pages from were Ian Flynn who beyond just their personal relationship, I couldn't imagine agreeing to let Ken publish his Archie work for him if Flynn himself owned the rights, due to his relationship with SEGA and IDW who I'd imagine would not be happy if he did that, and probably have some contractual shit making sure he's not republishing his old Sonic work on his own if he has it while he works for both of them.
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