In light of what you said, what was the overall interest in the comic before and after Ken introduced the melodrama nd plotlines?
it blew up. it was going to be cancelled with issue 50 so Ken went all in on the death of Robotnik storyline and melodramatic faggotry and it sold like crazy and more people started reading it and then it lasted another 200 issues before they rebooted it. him turning it into a soap opera for kids is what saved the book. before that it was mainly just one and done little comedy stories. there was some continuity but it was mostly just characters would return every now and then. his knuckles series and the change in direction for sonic essentially is what made it end up being the longest running licensed comic of all time. not that he is single-handedly responsible but the groundwork and direction the series went in under him is what the following writers did too. they just unlike ken were actually fans of the games so did their best to try to make it fit in more with that world. as far as me, I read it until 2005 or something probably. by middle school I couldn't be bothered to read sonic comics and I don't know if he was gone by the time I tapped out or not but I read it consistently the whole time until I just decided it was a little lame to be reading kid shit. I had also become aware of furries through the internet by that point and their association with sonic (largely through SatAM and Archie's comics) and I didn't want people to think I was one of those people because I still liked the hedgehog games and comics lol
apologies for a double post, I just wanted to clarify I'm not a Ken Penders defender or anything, I just really don't understand a lot of the frankly, visceral hatred people have towards the man and find it really funny. as a kid reading the comic, I remember reading letters pages where sometimes people would have just jumped in and be totally confused why it had fuck all to do with the games. there were back then plenty of people who disliked the comics for not being close enough to the games. from what I understand, post-reboot archie to a small degree and IDW's Sonic now has a lot of SEGA oversight and is basically exactly like the games. you'd think those people would consider Ken a hero for sabotaging the comics to the point they literally had to make them like the games. there are also people who hate him for taking the freedom fighter characters from sonic canon, like princess sally and rotor and them. Ken was one of the chief architects of those characters after the tv show ended for like 10 years, they probably love his work. are they mad because we didn't get sonic chronicles 2? the first one sucked! and the one thing I will agree with Ken about, even though the characters aren't exactly 1:1 with his comics, it was very obviously inspired by them. which when it came out I liked a lot because it was the first time I played a sonic game and was like huh yeah this is the sonic shit I know the crazy dark legion stuff.
there are plenty of things to laugh at him for, he is unintentionally hilarious. everything about his lawsuit and what he’s been up to since is just so weird. from the idea of continuing M25YL and Knuckles’ family in a weird spin off where he has to change all the characters but only vaguely, reprinting his old stuff despite them featuring licensed Sega characters, that time he tried to license out Anti-Sonic/Surge to neo nazis or whatever those guys were, the weird stuff he has said on twitter about cartoon character’s he worked on’s sex lives, the idea of releasing in app in 2024 dedicated to a SINGLE comic that’s an unofficial continuation of a licensed comic from 2003, the odd and frankly horrific change in art style over the years. Ken is a total artcow, but I really don't understand why people are always wishing death on him. he's just a harmless old retard who thinks too highly of his work, that was just simple and stupid little stories for kids.
do I think he should have been able to get the rights to all of those characters he made? no, not really. comic creators do deserve better compensation and despite 70% of them just being knuckles with different accessories he did come up with them, but really Archie's total incompetence is responsible for that. I don't blame him really I'd probably steal my shit back too if these retards were too dumb to keep track of copies of contracts. He also did totally fuck everything up for Ben Hurst trying to get that Sonic movie made, however I don't think that would have happened at the time regardless of Ben or Ken's differing movie pitches. That was when SEGA and TMS were making Sonic X. they weren't going to make and release an entirely separate animated Sonic movie at the same time that had absolutely nothing to do with what the brand had become by then when they were already making a cartoon show that was basically exactly like their newest games.
and people seem to really hate the idea he would consider reprinting his old work. which is also odd because half the people complaining about it have been complaining that they want sega to put it back out there anyways. and he does own it, who gives a shit? people act like Ken is irreversibly damaging the sonic IP by making the lara su chronicles. which Sega's incompetence has proven by now to just be literally impossible. Sonic 06, Boom, the initial movie design, if none of that shit killed sonic, and the furry porn artists or sonic.exe didn't do it, Ken and his terrible Knuckle's Daughter fanfiction can't do it either.
I say just let the old retard continue to do whatever he wants. it's funny. plus it took him 15 years to release 30 pages, it's not like he's ever going to finish all 7 volumes of lara su anyways. the best part is he legitimately thinks it's good. that's fucking hilarious. I could not IMAGINE finishing one of those pages and looking at it and thinking, god damn this is good stuff.
